It’s the major update that just keeps on giving! We are releasing yet another minor patch for 2.5.x to address some issues and tweak a few areas of the game. This release will fix up the container opening issue that multiple players have reported and hopefully correct some hardware compatibility issues.

We are still on the hunt for an options menu freeze as reported here and here. Please report your findings! We are still also tracking some issues with hardware compatibility. Even with an update to Electron, there seems to be still some with the dreaded “Lost GL Context” issue. We again will have to wait for updates upstream to correct this issue. There’s still hope as mentioned previous through the browser solution if you are okay with that. More information on that available here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/379210/discussions/0/27623709432022338

Improvements

Length of rest/sleep is now negatively impacted when resting/sleeping on snow, shallow water, cooling lava, and swamp tiles.

Disabled some creatures from being able to “stumble” where it would not make sense. (Thanks Amax!)

You can no longer attempt to rest/sleep on lava or cave entrances.

Unknown items (items that were added from mods that are no longer loaded) will now have proper grammar usage of the “an” article.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an oversight that did not allow water levels to change when gathering from sea water tiles.

Debug Tools

Argus

Well, it looks like we needed another 2.5.x release after all! In beta 2.5.6, we’ve addressed many issues and improved some player interaction like reducing item pick-up delay and increasing movement speed slightly among other things.

There’s still a few issues to solve (and some we are still waiting on to be fixed upstream as mentioned in the last update post), but it’s likely we’ll push those to 2.6.0 now.

We’ll keep updating the development branch nightly if you want to keep up to date with the more substantial changes that are likely to follow. We are going forward with the most requested feature, NPCs! But as always, the next major update will bring hundreds of other additions, changes, and improvements.

Note: Due to one bug fix, your custom binds for mods will need to be reset.

Improvements

Reduced the delay when picking up items (and sped up the item notifier animation).

Added a loading animation before the splash/Unlok screen.

Corpses will now be named what they were while alive.

Slightly increased the player movement speed.

New

Added a customizable bind (defaulted to escape) that will allow you to unfocus the chat bar.

Bug Fixes

Fixed moving into an open container not closing it (and producing a weird animation). (Thanks Amax!)

This may be the end of the line for minor patches for beta 2.5, depending on if there are any game breaking issues discovered.

We are still waiting on a patch upstream to fix some of the hardware conflicts we are having in the game (corrupted rendering and/or losing GL context). Unfortunately it doesn’t look like it is progressing very quickly, so we’ll have to move on. That being said, we’ll update the development branch (which will be beta 2.5.6 or 2.6) as soon as it becomes available.

Apologies on this situation. Feel free to refund or use our browser solution if your hardware is not supported at this time and do not wish to wait.

A special thank you to all that reported bugs and issues this time around for beta 2.5. Many bugs would have been undiscovered without your help!

New

Added a “Move (All) to Facing Container” selection to the item menu to match the previous drop to container functionality.

Improvements

Gathering will no longer result in a chance of 0 durability items placed on top of trees.

Added 11 new hotkeys and removed “Backspace” as the 13th hotkey, and instead added shift modifiers for hotkeys 13-24.

Improved the audio falloff so very distant sounds are no longer heard, making it easier to locate players in most instances.

The skeletal mage wand will now only attempt to teleport into open tiles (randomized). Previously it would fail if attempting to teleport into a blocked tile.

“Pick-up All” is now mentioned within the “Fast Pick-up” hint.

Renamed the “Milk” option to “Gather Milk”.

Bug Fixes

Fixed an issue where the game would endlessly attempt to sync when joining a multiplayer game through the Steam overlay. (Thanks Bruskedragon!)

Fixed an issue where players would stay connected to server indefinitely if they lost connection while playing (or their computer crashed). (Thanks blay.paul!)

Fixed save game mods importing themselves every time the title screen is shown.

Fixed a visual glitch that resulted in lit torches not showing the “ember” graphic when being placed down with under 200 decay. (Thanks the rift!)

Fixed a PVP-related multiplayer desync. (Thanks Kyun!)

Fixed tile events not having the proper sentence case in tooltips.

Fixed the “Pulchritudinous” milestone not triggering again when transmogrifying equipped items. (Thanks Maugrift!)

Fixed a bug where sliders (audio) could be interacted with while in-game when options were closed. (Thanks Snart!)

Technical

This week has been all about bug fixing. We have a large batch of issues that we have corrected in this release, but still have a few more to go, as well as some improvements we’d like to see get in before we start on beta 2.6. So, a beta 2.5.5 is indeed planned for next weekend likely. Please keep reporting any issues you run into!

We are also aware of a couple issues related to hardware from some players that we cannot fix quite yet. We are waiting for an update upstream (Electron) to potentially patch out these issues. Apologies if you are one of the few that are experiencing these issues.

Enjoy!

Improvements

Palm leaves are now considered tinder.

You can now once again remove quickslotted items by dragging and dropping from your quickslots (like prior to beta 2.5).

Mods now refresh when closing the Steam Overlay anywhere in the main menu. The “load game” menu now reloads the save list when mods are refreshed.

The item list for containers now displays in the correct sentence case (for both inspect messages and tooltips).

Removed the visual notifier for decayed lit torches, and removed references to “unequipping” them on decay.

Bug Fixes

Fixed items breaking their quickslot assignment when they were automatically re-assigned when getting the item in your inventory again in multiplayer.

Fixed a bug that would result in hatching a chicken (and boiling the egg) when placing an egg on cooling lava. Yep. (Thanks holyshield!)

Fixed an issue where binds could get stuck pressed during an auto save.

Corrected a visual glitch when equipping the spyglass.

Fixed games not loading with custom skills (while skill window is set to auto open) after the mod has been disabled.

Fixed containers not closing on death. (Thanks blay.paul!)

Fixed the auto save screen not staying up until the save had completed.

Fixed quick moving items (using the new bind) facing you into a certain direction.

Fixed an issue where using “Continue Game” did not warn about any missing mods you may have.

Fixed a bug that did not allow save game mods to be imported unless you loaded a game and then went back to the main menu.

Fixed multiple binds appearing as “OR bind OR bind”

Fixed audio fading in/out not being implemented correctly (leading to abrupt music stopping/starting) for some players in some instances.

Fixed a bug where hovering over a skill or milestone would flash and show “N/A” when passing a turn. (Thanks Amax!)

Technical

January 7th, 2018 update: We have hotfixed an issue where some players were getting black screens upon game launch.

This weekend we have another patch full of balance tweaks, improvements, and bug fixes. We still have more minor patches in us; possibly a beta 2.5.4 and 2.5.5 based on our list of issues still remaining.

One of the bigger changes has to due with multiplayer, where we have added in a fallback to support a larger variety of networking scenarios. Our previous solution (using WebRTC) found some players not able to join games due to unknown networking issues. Multiplayer will now fallback to WebSockets when a connection can’t be made with WebRTC. Hats off to Spacetech for his work on this, and Maune/blokzeil1/Woutersparre/jopi from Discord for helping us test the changes!

We also have a large batch of balance and improvements; smoothing out the new player experience. On a technical level, we also added some more compatibility options for players having trouble with WebGL 2 (GL context issues), and UI scaling. You can now find two new properties within the launch_options.json:

webGlVersion: 2,
zoomFactor: 1,

Players can now set the webGlVersion to 1 to force WebGL 1 to be loaded. zoomFactor can be changed to integer or decimal, such as 0.75, 1.25, 2, etc. to force UI scaling in-game (since interface scale in options is enable to effect in-game currently).

We got a pretty beefy “minor” patch ready for everybody tonight. In the last few days, we have been focusing on getting through our bug list and improving some of the shortcomings found in the beta 2.5 release; adding polish here and there, especially regarding mods. You’ll also find a couple quality of life changes that have been requested quite a bit through the months.

As always, please report any other issues you may have found!

Here’s an updated listing of the top bug finders since we started keeping count:

blay.paul (22 bugs reported)

Megan (15 bugs reported)

Amax (12 bugs reported)

sechsauge (8 bugs reported)

Adrien S. Enzo (8 bugs reported)

Improvements

Water is now ready to gather from lit stills when the fire reduces to embers.

Today is a special day. Today is the day beta 2.5.1 is released. What, is there something else going on today?

Joking aside, we have a small patch ready for everybody to hopefully fix up most of the multiplayer desyncing issues. We’ve also fixed up some weight bugs, improved fire interaction, and corrected a few other issues. Keep reporting any new issues you find!

We still have a fairly large todo for the 2.5.x series, so this is nowhere close to the end of what we want to do before work begins on beta 2.6. We’ll continue releasing these small patches as we go.

Happy “spending time with family but wishing you were playing video games” day!

Improvements

Item quality and skill bonuses are now applied when healing creatures.

Healing amount is now listed for creature healing in item tooltips.

Fire overflowing (caused from over-stoking a fire) can now spread to nonflammable tiles (except for water) with flammable items on it.

Over-stoking open fires can now overflow fire on to adjacent tiles mirroring the functionality of doodads.

Reincarnate

The time has finally come! After months of work, we’re ready to release our biggest update to date. The stars and planets have aligned and sprung forth 250 changes for our 2.5.0 beta release. Illuminati confirmed. We hope this update finds you well during the holiday season.

As most of you know, the concept and biggest addition backing beta 2.5 is the new multiplayer mode, hence the “Kinship” subtitle. Although, that might be overreaching due to the inclusion of PVP and, you know, that griefing friend you probably have.

As with most large major updates, expect a few hitches here and there at first. We’ll be adhering to our normal post-major rapid release cycle to address any beta 2.5 issues to make sure everything is ironed out and stable. Thank you to all that helped out to test this release; we couldn’t have made it here without you!

Some other prominent takeaways from the changelog (some featured in the video above):

You can now milk tamed goats. Your taming skill will reduce the amount happiness your goat will lose when being milked.

Added many new items including some rare items, lore-related items and added all types of mortars and pestles.

Redesigned all menus, ranging from the save game screen, to the options screen, to interrupting screens such as loading, confirm, or input screens.

Controlled fires (campfires, furnaces, etc.) will now last longer as they will eventually reduce to embers that can be re-stoked for normal functionality.

Added a new menu that automatically saves previous characters you’ve used, to use again or create new characters from.

Creatures will now take offerings from the ground and become tamed.

Added a new ore type, along with all the craftable tools, armors and weapons associated with it.

There are now 20 saves slots.

Skill hovers now reveal which stats each skill can increase.

Added a “pause menu” when in game which pauses single-player games in real-time turn mode. From it you may continue the game, return to the main menu, view the game options, and view multiplayer options for your world.

You can now hold down shift (rebindable) to turn directions without moving.

Arrows are now crafted with arrow shafts (making them lighter overall).

Updated the controls system to allow multiple binds on the same bindable action, more press types (mouse left, right, middle, scroll up and down, etc), and ctrl, alt, shift modifiers along with any press.

Added cooling lava and obsidian tiles (with a new resource and new functionality).

Added a resistance/vulnerability output for creatures with accuracy based on anatomy skill.

As some of you may already know (as I mentioned it quietly on the Steam forums), multiplayer is now live for testing on the development branch!

It’s still pretty early, and probably a bit buggy, which is where all the testers come in! We always look to the community to report any issues they are having, and very much appreciate it! And now with multiplayer, or just beta 2.5 in general, we probably have a giant batch of new issues to resolve. In terms of multiplayer, we are currently on the look-out for “desyncs”; issues that cause the players to become desynchronized from the server (or host player). If you’ve spotted one, make sure to send us your logs and any steps you think either the host or client (connecting) players took to make it happen. Don’t know how to send logs? I did a small write-up in this guide about it under “Opening and sharing the Wayward log file” here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=798938225

If you are more technically inclined, you can also find the logs directly in your console. Just search for “Synchronization issues!”, and it will be a big block of information that you can copy+paste.

There is some optimization still to be done, and some of the sync checking stuff we have enabled for testing does increase CPU/network usage, so if you notice lag, it’s most likely that or you are just simply too far away from the client. You can use the “/ping” chat command to see your latency.

I know many Wayward players (especially the dedicated ones) already know about this, but I thought I’d make it a bit more clear with an official announcement.

Multiplayer is OFFICIALLY coming to Wayward!

What started off as an impossibility in the eyes of many (including me) has realized itself through many months of testing and iteration. Much thanks goes to Gary “Spacetech” Wilber, our lead programmer for making this happen!

Our planned feature set for multiplayer include both options of permadeath and casual (respawning) as well as a toggle for PVP. The multiplayer works in a simulated real-time mode (as opposed to turn-based in single-player).

Players will be able to join Wayward multiplayer games through their friend’s Steam profile, their Steam friends list, or through an in-game menu. There’s also several new multiplayer chat commands available, like a handy “/kick” command for players that like to start fires under your feet. But who needs that when you can fight fire with fire!

It’s important to note that what gets released in beta 2.5 is subject to change and improve. The multiplayer will grow in scope and depth just like the single-player experience. Multiplayer is an optional feature, but a feature many, many people have requested. It is single-handedly the most requested feature to date. And one that was not easy to implement, especially since the game was never built with it in mind.

But also to those that don’t care about multiplayer, beta 2.5 won’t focus solely on multiplayer. Improving the core game is still a top priority. You can expect to see other exciting top-requested things such as new lore elements, a brand new ore type, a main menu UI overhaul, and much more! We’ll post a community discussion on wishlist topics for beta 2.5 coming up to get a more up to date priority list from everybody. If you are interested in the changes thus far in the beta 2.5 development branch, check out: http://steamcommunity.com/app/379210/discussions/3/1473096694445167021/